The 20 Most Prestigious Internships For 2018

The 20 Most Prestigious Internships For 2018

Google offers the most prestigious internship program, according to careers site Vault.

Many job seekers care deeply about having brand-name companies on their resume, and this urge often surfaces in college, when students begin recruiting for internships. Among the thousands of large companies in the U.S., what internships do students covet the most?

Careers site Vault.com released a ranking of the most prestigious internships. It surveyed roughly 12,000 current and former interns from more than 110 internship programs to answer the question.

To see the top 10 most prestigious internships, open the gallery below. For the full top 20, go to the end of this article.

For the third year in a row, Google takes the top spot. The company’s reputation as an attractive workplace with strong talent remains unmatched. “Anyone would hire you after you’ve worked there,” raved one respondent to Vault’s survey. The company is “trustworthy, advanced, always working harder and harder to achieve their goals,” said another Vault user. But that same user felt the company could be more transparent with consumers, presumably about how it uses their information. The user also offered this advice to future interns: “Be ambitious, strong-willed and expect to have to work on one-upping yourself all the time.”

On Vault’s list, Apple and Facebook maintain their second and third-place spots from last year, and Microsoft ranks fourth. Microsoft’s stock has more than doubled since early 2014, when Satya Nadella succeeded Steve Ballmer as CEO. Nadella even released a book this year touting the turnaround, titled Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone.

Amazon made a big leap in the ranking, jumping from number 11 last year to seven this year. Americans have developed a sense of awe about Amazon, especially after it purchased Whole Foods and surprised us all with the size of its ambition. Jeff Bezos’ 341,000-person company is recruiting business school students so aggressively that it has become the top MBA recruiter at Duke, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley.

Despite all the buzz about tech companies, finance and consulting firms continue to hold their ground as prestigious places to intern. Three banks made the top 20, including Goldman Sachs (#5), JPMorgan (#8) and Morgan Stanley (#9). Three professional services firms also broke the top 20: PwC (#13), Deloitte (#15) and the Boston Consulting Group (#16).

Full List: The 20 Most Prestigious Internships For 2018

1. Google

2. Apple

3. Facebook

4. Microsoft

5. Goldman Sachs

6. Tesla Motors

7. Amazon

8. JPMorgan Chase

9. Morgan Stanley

10. The Walt Disney Company

11. Nike

12. PwC

13. IBM

14. Deloitte

15. The Boston Consulting Group

16. Intel

17. ESPN

18. Mercedes-Benz

19. Berkshire Hathaway

20. The Coca-Cola Company

Correction(10/16/17): Netflix originally appeared on Vault’s list as #12, but Forbes removed the company since it does not offer internships. As a result, the Coca-Cola Company makes the top 20.